The dark and the door

Learn everything and then forget everything.

If you don’t learn, you’re in a dark room trying to build something. It’s too dark to see the tools or the materials. But you try regardless. You might create something great – something accidentally genius. More likely, you’ll make a mess.

The bulbs come on, you’re in a well-lit room. Now you’ve learnt everything. Now you can create something better because you can see what you’re doing. You can see your tools and your materials. It is comfortable here.

But there’s a problem. In this well-lit room, the things you create lack some essential madness, some spark, some divine ingenuity, because now you can see. There are no accidents. In the cold light of day, it’s all too easy, too obvious. What you’ve made looks like everything else.

You panic.

But now, with the lights on, you notice the door. It was always there, you just couldn't see it.

You step through the door, beyond the well-lit room.

And what do you see? More darkness. Only now it’s infinite. Now that you’ve learnt to build, you can shape this darkness, and colour it, and twist it. You can travel through it. You can explore, and create, and conjure. In this new darkness, you can be anything.